5G Home Internet nightly slow down

K5WA wrote:

New T-Mobile Home internet customer that has just replaced my ATT 4G equivalent due to T-Mobile's unlimited 5G cap for the same price.  I am 3 miles from my closest tower but have my 5G antenna on a 60' tower pointed at the T-Mobile tower.  I'm out in the boonies when I'm using this setup.  I get 4 out of 5 bars but I'm getting only 6 MB down and 20MB up.  I don't really need blazing fast speeds for my applications.  The upload speed is fine for me but the down speed is terrible.  I am waiting on a new WaveForm 4x4 MIMO antenna to place at 60' to see if that will help but I was positive that I should get better than this even while only using ANT1 (or ANT3) of the 4 antenna ports on my white T-Mobile hotspot box (G4AR?).  I'm even using LMR400 (not RG58) coax due to the terrible signal attenuation of RG58 at 6GHz.

I see some folks complaining about ONLY getting 100MB down…  Heck, I'd LOVE to see 100MB down.  I may have to go back to ATT 4G and live with the 100GB cap if I can't get this figured out.  I'd also love to catch the same tech that ChefZiggy mentioned in his post.

Did you not read the instructions while setting up your router? 60 feet is WAYYY too high. The higher you go the more interference you run into. Most people think the higher you go the better signal you get but that's simply not true. You want to have it below the roof of your house ideally. Move your antenna down to about 15-25 feet and then test your speeds there. I can guarantee they will be higher. I too am MILES away from my nearest tower and my router is sitting above my big living room windows. About 7-8 feet off the floor.

I get about 110 download and 30 upload when there is no congestion. During rush hour aka congestion times (4/5pm to about 9pm) my speeds drop to about 30/10 although sometimes when its really bad they go to about 10/2 or slightly lower. That rarely happens though and if it does I just reset my connection in the TMobile internet app and it will usually improve. Keep in mind I have multiple TVs, two home security systems with 10+ cameras, two computers, multiple cell phones, and other smart devices connected to this router. I have yet to have any complaints based off what I used to have (Hughes NET) this TMobile plan leaves them in the DIRT. Never again will I use Hughes NET, its 3x the price of TMobile for <1mbps satellite internet LOL. It was literally useless. No other ISP has yet to make it to my neighborhood.

I too plan on ordering the WaveForm 4x4 MIMO antenna due to how far away I am from the two closest towers. Hoping that can increase my speed as I have read in many other reviews. Even if its only slightly!